Santiago Sanchez Borboa

Welcome to my website. I’m a Mexican immigrant in the US living in Chicago. I received my B. A. in philosophy and English from Williams College and my Ph. D. in philosophy from the University of Arizona. I believe philosophy can help us transform our thinking, our lives, and the world. However, I contend that philosophy’s transformative and liberating potential can only be unlocked when we connect it to the current lived experience and conditions of persons who are needlessly suffering in a world we are killing despite having more resources than ever before. Making this connection requires putting philosophy in conversation with the full spectrum of disciplines including the sciences, arts, and humanities, but also cuisine, design, and more, with special emphasis on bodies of knowledge that center the experiences/perspectives of marginalized and oppressed persons. 

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When we center these perspectives, which have long been silenced, we realize that the complex social problems we face today can only be effectively tackled using transdisciplinary frameworks that can help guide, implement, and refine nuanced and intersectoral interventions that jointly intervene on interrelated aspects of our social, economic, legal, political, cultural, and other systems and institutions to bring about large-scale, long-term changes. My approach to philosophy is thus thoroughly transdisciplinary, and I’m always looking for potential collaborators in different disciplines and fields with whom to put ideas in conversation or apply them outside the academy. I’m especially interested in using theoretical tools to craft practical solutions to social problems. At its best, theorizing can help guide and improve practice, which itself can help enrich and refine our theorizing, leading to upward spirals of mutually supporting theory and practice, and this is the form I aim for my philosophy to take.